Lifted from Yahoo!Answers: ‘New York Times, Jan 9, 1966, page 146: the front page banner of the New York Times said in giant letters: God Is Dead…! It was one of the most controversial news stories of all time, and many people actually called the paper asking for confirmation.’
I just listened to ‘Levon,’ by Elton John, which has the lyric about God is dead, as per the NY Times, which suggested this thread. While I’m old enough to actually remember seeing the headline when I lived near New York as a kid, I don’t remember what prompted it.
The actual headline was “God is Dead” Debate Widens. It was about Emory University theology professor Thomas Altizer and theologians like him, who were trying to work out a sort of “post-God” theology. But what’s the General Question here?
I think the question is “what prompted that headline,” and you seemed to answer it. The Times was not reporting an event. They were reporting on a growing movement within American theology. Time Magazine had a similarly provocative headline on its cover a few months later.
I thought this question sounded familiar, and I think it’s because of this old thread on the same subject. (It might have been revived recently by a spammer, which is why it’s so familiar.)
The front page of the Times never said in large letters “God Is Dead.” That was the cover of the April 8, 1966 Times magazine. (See the Times obituary of John T. Elson.
The Times article that might have prompted that, and I say prompted because other media slavishly copy whatever the Times does, was one by Times religion editor John Cogley titled ‘God Is Dead’ Debate Widens on January 8, 1966.
So a theological movement already existed in 1965 and had taken that phrase from Nietzsche as a catchy shorthand. The Times noted it, but hardly made a big deal about it. The article was buried on p. 146.
It was the Time magazine cover that made the big splash.
Does either of these incidents match up with the song lyrics?
Not very well. Unless the song is taking place in the far future, Levon had to be born a long time ago since he is a war veteran with a son. It could be in the far future, because that son, Jesus, wants to go to Venus. We don’t know if that’s just a kid’s imagination or a reality in that future time.
As a writer, I say Bernie Taupin used New York Times because Time magazine doesn’t fit the scansion. However, all this is getting away from the OP.
So the 1966 New York Times article works. A war veteran could certainly have a son born on Christmas Day, 1965, and then the NYT article comes out two weeks later.
You’re right. But then this bit from Yahoo Answers
is misleading, since it suggests that the New York Times stated “God is Dead” as a fact when the headline actually reads “Religion; ‘God Is Dead’ Debate Widens” and is a more general discussion of theology. Plus it’s not really a new story, but instead is the religion column.
TIme didn’t exactly say that either. Per the link in post #3, the Time Magazine cover said “Is God Dead?” The article itself was titled, “Toward a Hidden God.”
On Sunday, January 9, 1966, the New York Times ran the headline ‘God Is Dead’ (single quotes are in the headline). It was on page 146, the same page that had the article ‘God Is Dead’ Debate Widens. The text below the headline began, “The following ritual was presented during a chapel service at a small denominational college in the South. It was designed to explore in litugical form the experience of the “death of God.””
What did I miss? The New York Times did, in fact, have a “God Is Dead” headline, and this is information that doesn’t seem to be anywhere prior in the thread.
In one of those lovely little jokes in Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby, she picks up the Time magazine proclaiming "God Is Dead while in the waiting room of her obsetrician(a/k/a the witch doctor).
Well, the Orthodox Christmas as marked on the Old Calendar (by Russian Orthodox and others) is January 7th. And since newspapers typically report the news of the previous day, this fits entirely.
No, that’s not at all what those posts say. Both discuss the article headlined “‘God Is Dead’ Debate Widens,” published on page 146 of the New York Times on January 9, 1966 (not January 8, as stated in Exapno Mapcase’s post).
But there were two articles published on the subject on page 146 that day. The other article actually did have the headline “‘God Is Dead.’” So it is true that the New York Times, roughly at Christmas time, said that “God Is Dead” (although the headline was itself a quotation, but that’s a subtlety that one can safely expect to be lost on the public).
